In ‘Cancer Alley,’ a renewed focus on systemic racism is too late – By Luke Denne (NBC News) / June 21 2020
Black Americans are dying from COVID-19 at more than double the rate of other groups, which experts say owes in part to pollution in Black communities.
Robert Taylor has lived on the banks of the Mississippi River in Reserve, Louisiana, his entire life. Both of his parents worked in the local sugar refinery when plantations made up this stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
But where sugar cane once grew, chemicals now spew from smoke stacks.
When the petrochemical industry moved in, the predominantly Black community’s health began to suffer.
“We didn’t know why. We were just ignorant plantation hands, you know, the descendants of slaves,” he said.
A higher risk of cancer in these communities — surrounded by the densest concentration of petrochemical plants in the country — have led to the area gaining the unwelcome title of “Cancer Alley.” Similar situations have played out in communities across the U.S. in which Black communities have had to endure more pollution than their white neighbors.
These historical and structural iniquities are now under fresh scrutiny, spurred by protests about police violence that have expanded to discuss how systemic racism has hurt Black communities for decades.
It’s a particularly timely discussion for areas like Taylor’s in Cancer Alley where a different disease has been ravaging the community in recent months. St. John the Baptist Parish, where Reserve is located, has recorded one of the highest death rates from COVID-19 in the entire state, and at one point the whole country.
Continue to article: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/cancer-alley-renewed-focus-systemic-racism-too-late-n1231602
